Joss Whedon To Anita Sarkeesian’s Trolls: ‘Deal.’

Anita Sarkeesian is controversial because honestly, a lot of gamers on the Internet are seventeen, they still think feminism is “hoes up, bros down,” and are unable to take any sort of criticism about any aspect of their life, especially when it’s one with merit. As a result, whenever Sarkeesian rolls out a new video about misogyny in video games, Twitter becomes a river of poison. And Joss Whedon, for one, has had enough of it.

Honestly, whenever misogyny in the gaming industry comes up, there are one of a handful of responses: “Chicks don’t game anyway,” “She’s just listing off stuff from Wikipedia,” and “She’s wrong because I say so.” The last one is the easiest: Just look up how many rape/death threats Sarkeesian gets for saying “Hey, sometimes video games don’t treat women very well! Maybe they should stop doing that!”

To tackle the first two, yes, they do game quite a bit. But even if they didn’t, so what? That’s not the problem. The problem is that culturally speaking, a game developer never stopped and thought “You know, maybe this is kind of creepy. Maybe I should consider another way of approaching the effect I want to create.”

Secondly, is Sarkeesian breaking new ground? As Whedon points out, it’s not so much the depth of the analysis as the sheer number of examples you can find. It’s not that one or two developers do this sometimes, it’s that almost all of them do that almost all of the time. That’s pretty damn depressing.

It’s not that video games need to stop doing things, it’s that they need to start doing things better. It’s that simple.

The same Joss Whedon who claims to be a friend of feminism, yet writes the majority of his female characters as tight leather wearing, sexualized ass kickers that would make Luc Besson blush?

I have no problem with Anita Sarkeesian though (the majority of her points are valid, and she backs them up), other than the fact that she basically pocketed the money she raised though Kickstarter to help with her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (which returned shortly after with little to no change in quality). But shame on those people for giving her $160,000 and thinking she’d do what she said she would with it.

-mention trope
-claim, with no real explanation why, that the trope is demeaning to women
– show examples of said trope in games

It’s pure PoMo bullshit. Tropes, like words, cannot have meaning independent of the artist’s intent, yet Sarkeesian sees nothing wrong with asserting that any given trope is *really* hiding misogynistic intent, and if you disagree, it just proves her correct. This is not an argument, it’s an unfalsifiable religious belief, every bit as circular as a fundamentalist insisting his holy book(s) are the word of God because they say so.

I could go on, but Instig8tive Journalism already covered this as well as it needs to:

No, they are not, and no, she does not. This is the woman who can claim, with an utter lack of self-awareness, that it is a myth that men generally physically stronger than women (in spite of all evidence to the contrary)

Sarkeesian’s arguments – and in truth, they are nothing of the sort – follow the same pattern:

Sarkeesian says a lot, but nothing she says actually supports her claim. It’s pure PoMo bullshit; as far as Sarkeesian is concerned, if she says something is misogynistic, it is, and anyone who argues otherwise is simply proving her right. It’s pretty common among the Left today to argue in this fashion, but that doesn’t make the claims legitimate, it makes them unfalsifiable religious beliefs.

You can’t simply imagine that a particular trope (or, for that matter, any statement or work of art) *could* be offensive, if interpreted a certain way, and from there assume that the intent *must* have been to offend.

Take, for just one example, the “Stuffed In The Fridge” trope. The point of the trope is to paint the villain as a horrific monster, and give the hero more reason to bring down the villain. Sarkeesian, on the other hand, insists that the trope exists to denigrate women. Sure, it *could* be that, if the artist intended it to be so. But you can’t simply assert that it is so – if you do that, you are taking the artist’s words, giving them new meaning, and claiming this new speech was in fact what the artist meant all along. It’s dishonest, and robs the artist of all agency.

I could go on, but Instig8ive Journalism covers this – I’d link, but Uproxx eats the posts. You can find it on YouTube.

See… this is the problem with criticism done by people who don’t really understand it (or read by people who don’t understand it). It’s not so much a way of interpreting what the artist meant, but it’s a way of looking at the culture that allowed/inspired the artist to make it in the first place.

I can’t watch her videos because, honestly, they bore the shit out of me and I am fully capable of having my own opinions without having someone with a webcam feed me theirs, BUT, I think the purpose of her videos isn’t to call out the individual artists, writers, and programmers, but instead to call out the whole industry as being just a little too comfortable with this kind of stuff.

“See… this is the problem with criticism done by people who don’t really understand it (or read by people who don’t understand it). It’s not so much a way of interpreting what the artist meant, but it’s a way of looking at the culture that allowed/inspired the artist to make it in the first place.”

This is the problem with Post-Modernist critical theory; it’s not criticism at all. It’s politics insisting that it is criticism (and in fact, the only valid criticism). Everything you just said is completely fucking wrong, and you can go fuck yourself with a rusty tire iron by insulting my intelligence. Yes, I do fucking understand what criticism is supposed to be, and yes, accurately interpreting what the fuck the artist was trying to state *is* the first important step in criticizing the artist’s work.

That culture influences thought – and thus, art – is not being debated. The cultural influences of an artist *can* be a useful tool in interpreting what an artist meant in a particular work, but they *cannot* be used in place of actually doing the work of interpretation. Furthermore, you have to actually prove your original claims about society, they cannot be assumed prima facie evidence; this is something that Sarkeesian (and PoMo critics in general) never does. She simply asserts that if a bad thing happens to a woman, then it is evidence of sexism, res ipsa loquitur. The “argument” ends perfectly circular: society is sexist (because bad things happen to women), ergo, this media that represents bad things happening to women is sexist, because obviously, and then that media is itself evidence of society being sexist.

@nyccine the real problem with this entire conversation is the people who are against her speaking too loudly. If it was all folks like you, it’d be fine, but the rape and murder threats completely change the conversation. Here I am assuming that she gets more than just the ones she posts, which probably isn’t a safe assumption at all, particularly sense she clearly frames the ones she posts so as to imply that she is only showing us the very worst ones.

Nontheless, whatever her position, unpopular or otherwise, there’s no part of whatever she’s doing that deserves the threats.

1) The internet is a rough-and-tumble place, and anyone with any opinion on anything that reaches a wide audience can pretty much be guaranteed to get similar threats. Hell, I get told to kill myself, called a “cock-sucking faggot,” had death wished upon me, just for playing a certain way in Starcraft. I had a guy with multiple accounts harass me for days no matter how many times I blocked communication. There is no corresponding groundswell of support for any of the numerous nobodies who get the same treatment.

Everyone, even the trolls, when asked agrees that this is a sad state of affairs, but G.I.F.T. is still with us. That said, the reality is that such comments simply are never bona fide threats of harm – they’re either assholes getting off on being an asshole anonymously, or, and this actually seems to be more common, gamer geeks lashing out inappropriately because of the nature of her criticism. Saying that the very thing a person enjoys most is in fact vile sexism (or any social ill) triggers a reaction in people. We’d like it to not be the case, and by all means the behavior should be called out when it pops up, but it’s human nature, and sadly doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.

2) Sarkeesian very much enjoys the trolling – every time she gets threats, every times she gets called bad names, there’s another round of positive press, another round of donations. It’s been pointed out that Sarkeesian frequently manipulates the comment section of her youtube videos to provoke outrage and get more nasty comments. Additionally, there’s a not insubstantial amount of evidence that some of these threats might even be hoaxes, particularly her recent claim to have been driven out of her home by twitter threats from a “Kevin Dobson.”

3) Neither Sarkeesian, nor her supporters, ever make any effort to respond to the legitimate criticisms of her arguments. Instead, the threats are held up as the *only* responses to her claims, and, much like in other debates over feminism, anyone attempting to join the conversation with any level of criticism is immediately accused of being just like the jerks attacking her, much as in the same way the go-to response on feminist blogs and media is to accuse the critic of being a misogynist, or claiming he can’t get laid, or is some kind of MRA, instead of actually debating the issues.

nyccine on graphic, repeated death threats:
“We’d like it to not be the case, and by all means the behavior should be called out when it pops up, but it’s human nature, and sadly doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.”

nyccine on a mild bit of criticism from another commenter:
“Everything you just said is completely fucking wrong, and you can go fuck yourself with a rusty tire iron by insulting my intelligence.”

it’s the same damn completely illogical arguments over and over everywhere… i mean just look to the linked gammasquad article, several comments essentially saying “but they’re not REALLY gamers because they don’t play the games i play!” and “well i’ve never met a female gamer or even heard one online, so they don’t exist!”. yes, let’s redefine what a gamer is and use your anecdotal bullshit so we can deny reality. but i’d much rather that kind of stupidity than the frothing at the mouth vitriol that gets spewed elsewhere.

“is controversial because honestly, a lot of gamers on the Internet are seventeen, they still think feminism is “hoes up, bros down,” and are unable to take any sort of criticism about any aspect of their life, especially when it’s one with merit.” THANK YOU.

and the negative comments has got nothing to do with the hypocrisy that that woman spurts?
all she is saying it is, violence against women = bad but violence against men = ok

what kind of feminism is that?
the last i heard the founders and early activist for feminism fought for equality of sexes NOT more rights for women, less rights for men, NOT women are better than men, men are worse than women.

Feminism is about equality but hypocrites like that woman in the article has turned it into a war of sexes whereby women should be given more rights and men given less.

Any threat of violence should be dealt with through the police, no reasonable person disputes this.

But plenty of people who offended feminists and social justice warriors have been subjected to violence threats on twitter as well. That doesn’t mean you and Joss Whedon are in any way responsible for the actions of those lunatics.

So how are dudes who play video games worse than any other group of people? No one has answered that.

TLDR, Women are complaining about games that weren’t marketed to them. My only real complaint is that she’s unreproachable, a lot of her criticisms are down right ham fisted as she starts reaching for more games to complain about, because she needs to add a few more minutes to justify how long it takes to come out with one of these videos. And there’s absolutely no room for rebuttal to these criticisms. Sure a few response articles can be posted to argue the points, but they won’t get nearly the same exposure to eventually be compared to Sarkeesian’ s videos. Mind you, these are criticisms of her that would refine and better serve her argument, but in the end no one wants to hear these objections.

If all she was doing was saying that there isn’t enough female marketed games then there wouldn’t be an issue. But she’s not just doing that. It’s easy to make claims and accusations of sexism and misogyny when you don’t provide any evidence or offer any avenue for rebuttal.

Honestly, I’m not sure that qualifies as a ‘straw man’ argument per se, but regardless, Dan makes a good point. Video games are not individual entities or the work of individual entities. They are a collaborative process that is largely driven by perceived consumer demands. If games that objectify women sell well, expect more of them.

It’s reasonable to want games to portray women in a better light, and it is more than reasonable to hope that enough examples of that sort of game would hit the market, so that at least there is the possibility of them being successful and demonstrating demand (because, let’s face it: If EA thought it could make money with a game that consisted solely of Gloria Steinem kicking misogynistic men in the balls, it would happily make that game, and all the endless indistinguishable sequels it could get away with). What is less reasonable is to expect the industry to change for moral or ethical reasons. You cannot spend morals or ethics, and that makes them a poor motivator in a highly competitive, somewhat anonymous industry.

Women and minorities get treated like shit on a daily basis, and are historically shitted upon for the most part. The issue I have with the rallying against ‘violence against [Minority X]’ represented in video games, pop culture, comics, etc. is that it’s a symptom of a problem, not something that forcing a fix is going to change. You can’t believe that video games don’t cause violence – as numerous studies have shown – while at the same time believing that violence against women in video games somehow begets violence or misogyny in real life. It’s akin to the Parent’s Television Council advocating changes based on their morality without question. By advocating for changes in video games, comics, tv, movies, etc. when you see them (and after the fact) you are just treating the symptoms of the larger problem. The issue people – in this case many gamers – keep having is that they perceive they are being told things have to change, as opposed to being explained why these things are a problem, and convincing them to WANT these changes. There isn’t going to be less violence against women or any other minority in virtual life unless people are convinced in reality that these are values we should strive for.

Do you know how to treat this particular disease? By making people look dead on at the symptoms. To make it abundantly clear just how many symptoms there are.

“The issue people – in this case many gamers – keep having is that they perceive they are being told things have to change, as opposed to being explained why these things are a problem, ”

That’s just a symptom. the disease is they are fucking willfully ignorant. There are plenty of people out there breaking down why these issues are a problem.

“There isn’t going to be less violence against women or any other minority in virtual life unless people are convinced in reality that these are values we should strive for.”

If I have to convince you to not want women and minorities to be treated like shit and that people in general should be treated with basic common decency, then you are a human being only in the biological sense and I would prefer to not spend time with you.

are you both serious? it’s a straw man because no one is arguing that video games are sentient or have empathy. it’s an absurd misrepresentation of the actual argument.

” nobody has offered an actual solution to the perceived problem, or even stated what an acceptable landscape would be”

really? you’ve never heard anyone argue that women should be seen as more than just objects or eye candy in media? that violence against women shouldn’t be lazy script writing or played as sexualized victims a disproportionate amount of time? i can’t tell if you’re just intellectually dishonest or just sloppy. neither would surprise me. none of those solutions would require a “50/50” split, so why you keep harking on that across two articles is beyond me.

“would it kill you to use a capital letter?” no. would it kill you to use logic and reason?

@Derp Gently
“It’s reasonable to want games to portray women in a better light,”

FULL STOP. yet, people like dan up there seem to think sarkeesian’s videos and “feminists” and “SJWs” say something else completely different and have to make up idiotic straw men to try to turn it into something it’s not. but no, he’s so hung up on this “50/50 split” and tweaking what it means to be a “gamer” so that it fits his narrow world view. he saw a poll that says “48% of gamers are women”, and hand waves it away by saying “Because I see what that report says, but my life experience indicates that is simply not true.”

One of the major complaints about Anita Sarkeesian, that even supporters of her cause have, is that she is immediately dismissive of any argument she perceives to be counter to hers. She, and others like her, are discussing a valid point regarding the portrayal of women in not just video games, but art and entertainment in general. However, immediately dismissing any and all criticism you receive just because you have received completely irrational criticism (to say the least about the death and rape threats) in the past, is not at all conducive to bringing about the changes you seek.

If misogyny is such a huge problem in video games, and it is upsetting a lot of women, why is Anita Sarkeesian the only one on youtube complaining about it.
I have looked for other women on youtube complaining about this injustice and the only video’s I seem to find on youtube are Anita’s.

I will compare her issue to an issue I have.

I hate Hooter’s restaurant. I think it is degrading to women and for the owner’s to have the gall to call it a “Family Restaurant” is more than bold.
I could complain about it, but as I am a man, I would be very low in the minority of “Men complaining about Hooter’s”. Also, women work there on their own free will. No one is making them work there. In other words, my words would be falling on deaf ears. But there is a solution. There is more restaurants I can visit and frequent, which I do.
My advice: Stay away from what you find offending and just eat at another restaurant.

The simple fact of the matter is this…MEN BUY MORE GAMES, not PLAYS more games BUYS more games. Thus the reason games are targeted toward a male audience.

Guys and Gals do me a favor. Go to your local Gamestop, stay there for at least two to three hours, and count how many men compared to women enter the store.
I use to work at EB Games, Waaaaaay before it was Gamestop, and I can attest that the male to female ratio, that BUYS games, is a very high percentage in favor of men.

If a game offends you, play another game!
If a movie offends you, stop watching it!
If a book offends you, stop reading it!
If Fox News offends you, burn the station to the ground!

“why is Anita Sarkeesian the only one on youtube complaining about it.”

::looks at anita sarkeesian wikipedia entry::

“Attempts were made to hack her Twitter and Google accounts, doctored images of her were posted online, threats of rape were made against her on Twitter, and negative comments were posted to her YouTube and Facebook pages. Her Wikipedia article was repeatedly vandalized with images of sex acts. Her website was subjected to denial-of-service attacks, and there were efforts to obtain and distribute her personal contact information.”

yeah i mean, really, why aren’t more woman subjecting themselves to this? it’s also not like a simple google search will come up with hits dating back over a decade and a half of other people talking about sexism in games…

@Biff
Lynching is a complete different act all together. When someone is lynced you are actually doing physical harm against another human being. I would say the person being lynched did not really have a say in the matter.

@Lt. Surge
Again it goes back to free will. There are so many video games out there that if someone played a new one everyday, for the rest of their lives, they would die WAY before playing them all.
Stop complaining about the ones that offend you and enjoy the ones that entertain you.
The point I was making is that something is always going to offend someone…..Porno anyone? How does that portray women? How long has that been around?
But here are things that happen in REAL LIFE
Human sex trafficking?
Unequal rights for women in the work place?
How women are seen in foreign countries such as Iraq and Iran?
These actions affect people in REAL LIFE
But someone wants to complain about a virtual world that is meant for entertainment..a fictional world. instead of the atrocities brought upon real people, in real life…Time well spent.

@GreenBastard it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize a major part of pop culture and not just hand wave it as ‘somebody else’s problem’ or as ‘there are more important things to worry about’. it creates a false dichotomy that just because some problems are worse than others so you shouldn’t bother with the lesser ones.

“But someone wants to complain about a virtual world that is meant for entertainment..a fictional world. instead of the atrocities brought upon real people, in real life…Time well spent.”

the issue is mostly that it perpetuates stereotypes and an overall problem with society as a whole… that women are generally perceived as less than men or property to be had and a host of other bullshit. people like to pretend like pop culture doesn’t have an effect on the real world (it absolutely does), but pop culture is certainly a reflection of the society that produced it. if you have a ton of shit coming out that shows women being portrayed in a disproportionate amount as the victim… that probably means there’s a huge problem with that society with women being victims. children, teenagers, adults, etc. are constantly influenced by the culture around them. seriously, how many times do people act things out they saw in a movie or were inspired to action by something the read in a book? storytelling is a huge part of human history for passing on morals and give meaning to the world around us. to think video games has no effect is pretty ignorant, no?

Common sense will never prevail over ignorance, because Ignorance can not recognize it. People have killed people way before entertainment existed, and have done bodily harm, or desensitized women, before “Mainstream” entertainment existed.

1) she’s not the only one complaining about it
1a) As Lt Surge pointed out, the reaction could be driving away more women (and men) who would like to say something

2) either you really don’t hate Hooters as much as you claim, or you’re too chicken shit to do anything about it. Either way, this was a stupid anecdote.
2a) At least you have options to eat elsewhere. As you so helpfully point out, publishers don’t seem too interested in appealing to female gamers

3) “The simple fact of the matter is this…MEN BUY MORE GAMES, not PLAYS more games BUYS more games. Thus the reason games are targeted toward a male audience. ”
Nope, parents buy more games than any other demographic and that usually means the mother. If you insist on being a pedantic dick, you can at least get your facts straight befor misrepresenting them
3a) Do you think men buy more games because…women in general aren’t too enamored with the way games are made?

4) Yes, you are being a gatekeeper for your pretend He-Man Woman Haters’ Club. You are completely missing the point. It isn’t one or a few games. It is an entire industry that doesn’t seem to give two shits about half the population. And you should feel insulted too. It is lazy writing and pandering. and it builds up the stereotype that videogamers are fat virgins in their mother’s basement cover in cheetos dust.

my kind of approach? you mean by pointing out how someone is making completely fallacious arguments consisting of nothing but logical fallacies? perhaps if someone had something even remotely relevant or meaningful to say on the topic, i wouldn’t have to point out their ignorance and could actually engage in some kind of meaningful discussion.

You seem really upset about this. Take a deep breath and relax, this is a calm discussion of the nuances that seem to be overlooked in a sometimes hyperbolic and ranting debate.

It’s not a straw man, because Dan is not actually proposing that video games are people, and then attempting to defeat that absurd suggestion to strengthen his argument. He’s suggesting that the makers of video games are large corporate entities motivated by greed.

As to the “FULL STOP” aspect of the discussion, it’s not very helpful. I don’t (and wouldn’t want to) dispute that women are portrayed in a poor light in a lot of pop culture. But it’s like saying “It’s reasonable to want world peace, but it is unlikely to happen without some sort of incentive that makes sense.” The point is that you will not improve the portrayal of women in media through wanting it, or through outrage, or through meaningless industry awards for saying nice words. You will get actual change when you can make a compelling argument for selling games that portray women well.

As for the rest, while it isn’t a night spent discussing the insidious effects of the male gaze with Laura Mulvey, I’d say that “The premise is that a lot video games are misogynistic” is in fact a pretty accurate shorthand for the question at hand. One example of which is the portrayal of Princess Peach in the hackneyed role of damsel in distress. Is there some other topic I’m missing?

A lot of the recent hate has very little to do with Anita Sarkeesian, but with how she directly supports Zoe Quinn. If what’s being said about Quinn is true, which it definitely looks like it is, it makes Anita and the people that comprise “video game journalism” look real bad.

@Mr List: It isn’t that it’s getting passed over, it’s that the sites involved are actively suppressing any discussion of the matter, except insofar as they can point to the more abusive commenters as representative of male treatment of women in gaming..

@nyccine That would explain a site like Kotaku not reporting it beyond Stephen Totillo’s comment about divulging any personal relationships to avoid a conflict of interest. But it doesn’t necessarily explain why other gaming sites (or Uproxx) aren’t talking about it. I’m not sure any other games journalist was mentioned except for Grayson.

When I got back, I did more research. Holy crap I did not realize what the hell was going on in regards to Quinn, Kotaku, and “gaming journalism” dying right before my eyes. Three reasons why none of the bigger sites are reporting: Quinn has more connections/blackmail/etc than on the surface, not reporting due to shame, or a lot of white knighting.

@tetrisdork I don’t think video game journalism is “dying” so much as it never existed. The fact that other people in the industry were apparently harmed – to say nothing of the vitriol hurled at her ex – makes it a bit more repugnant than usual, but this is pretty much always how video game journalism has operated, with no shame. Developers make no bones about buying good press and honestly it’s not going to stop without a massive boycott. So it’s not going to stop, basically.

It is amusing to see someone who publicly, and repeatedly, claimed that cheating on someone and then having sex with them is rape, be so loudly defended with claims of “slut shaming” – it kind of puts the lie to the whole “we criticize conservatives having affairs because of the hypocrisy” claim.

@Mr List yeah, I’m kind of surprised we haven’t heard anything about this here either, though obviously it would be in the form of “Zoe Quinn is getting attacked for being a woman in the gaming industry. Here’s why you’re all assholes for doing so.”

For all the furor over Zoe Quinn there sure seems to be a lot of nothing behind it. The only “positive review” I have seen linked was listing DQ in a list of greenlit games. And if it is truly about “game journalism” why aren’t we focused more on the journalists and a lot less on Zoe Quinn? Go on reddit and it is 80% ZQ hate which doesn’t bode well for the “it isn’t about women” bluster.

I believe there’s a Kotaku article in which it’s the very first title mentioned in top 50 indie games to watch for or something. That’s huge press.

I would be lying if I didn’t say what Zoe reportedly did in her relationship didn’t affect my view of her, but I actually don’t care about that. People are allowed to be, or not be if that boyfriend, wizardchan, Reddit, anyone else are liars, shitty.

I care much more about the two things that it implies. The first being, that gaming journalism is basically like every other form of journalism and media. Cronyism is acceptable and gaming journalists, indie devs, celebrities all circle the wagons to defend their circle jerk regardless of the severity of the issue. The second being that every criticism related to Zoe Quinn and the journalists involved in this thing is now being misrepresented as misogyny. People shouldn’t get free passes when they make decisions that they KNOW might have negative repercussions. Zoe Quinn knew what she was doing if she did it. All the people that allegedly were with her knew what they were doing. No one should be without blame, in particular the journalists. It’s inexcusable to take an issue that has strong implications of being conflict of interest and sweep it under the rug because of “misogyny”.

Last thing I want to say is about the approach of these “-ism in media” pieces is this. It’s probably good to point this stuff out, but these guys are corporations that are out to make money. They do their research and they know their target demographics. If this is what’s appealing to the demographic that makes the most money, we need to change the cultural mindset of that demographic not just say this is what’s happening. It’s like me pointing out to you that your skin is red and irritable because you got sunburned. I have just stated what happened, I haven’t done anything to fix it so it doesn’t happen again. That would be me saying, “Next time try using sunscreen.”

@Nippopotamus I read the article. It was one of three games deemed the ones to play in that batch and it got a screenshot. However the game itself was out for a long time as a web based game and had a lot of pre-existing praise from lots of places for tackling a heavy subject in a rather unique way.

Now that it is afternoon and not late at night (stayed up til 4am just digging for more info), I can address this better. And still think this is gaming’s biggest shame of the year as I see people I kinda respect (MovieBob, Max Scoville) pretty much defend her like the white knights they are to protect their Ayn Rand*. I’ve even considered not going to SB Nation and The Verge anymore because they’re from Polygon’s parent company, as well as probably the Gawker sites and all of Defy (Escapist/GT/Smosh Games).

@nyccine I agree. It is a double standard that needs to be stopped.

*Yes, she is Ayn Rand in a sense. ICYDK, search Nathaniel Branden and his relationship with her.

The craziest thing about the Zoe Quinn saga: It united some of her former feminist supporters with 4Chan. You know you have fucked up when mortal internet enemies team up to make sure you can’t bury your (and by extension, your cohorts) dirty laundry.

How is the fact the fact that these games aren’t marketed to women an excuse? If anything that makes it worse.

First off there’s a bunch of shit that’s marketed towards women that male nerds feel like they have right to comment on. Plenty of nerd dudes walking around with opinions on Twilight and My Little Pony and, hell, Buffy but no one tells them they don’t count because it wasn’t marketed to them. Dudes walk around the mentality that “What’s Ours is Ours and What’s Yours is Ours Too” but when anyone from an outgroup, not just women, want to comment on the problems in that medium they’re told “This Isn’t For You”.

And if its not marketed towards women, who is it marketed towards? THE MEN THESE WOMEN ARE GOING TO HAVE TO DEAL WITH. They’re going to meet these men at school, at work, at church, on the street, in the club, in elevators. They’re going to be in the government, on the police force, in their hospitals. EVERYWHERE. And they’re all going have been taught that this how to see women. And furthermore they’re going to be told that is how all men really see women because when you say something isn’t “marketed” to a group you’re saying that this is how men think and talk about women when women aren’t around.

And don’t pull the “Its Just A Game” card. People write novel length blogposts and get all teary eyed about how a video game did this for them or taught them this. Media matters, it helps shape how see and reinforces our opinions of the world.

You can’t insist that men can’t have media that caters to their interests, that there be no male spaces whatsoever.

Also, it’s horrendously absurd to claim that video games teach men to despise women, and it’s quite hypocritical to claim so when gamers have for years scoffed at any suggestion that other moral ills (namely, violence) can also be laid at the feet of video games.

Nowhere did I say that. Men are totally allowed to have their own spaces and no one is coming to take them away but what about male spaces requires them to be places where we tear down women? And video games are a space that have ALWAYS had women and their presence is only growing and they’re tired to having to deal with bullshit.

When someone tells you they’re tired of being disrespected you should listen to them.

Gamers have rightfully fought back against the idea that there’s a one to one correlation between a violent game and a violent life but don’t pretend that consuming any sort of media for hours on end doesn’t have any effect on the way you see the world whether its video games or the Bible.

“You seem really upset about this. Take a deep breath and relax, this is a calm discussion of the nuances that seem to be overlooked in a sometimes hyperbolic and ranting debate.”

um, i’m fine over here. no need for the patronizing.

” because Dan is not actually proposing that video games are people, and then attempting to defeat that absurd suggestion to strengthen his argument.”

no, he’s proposing that the people that say video games have sexist content are arguing that. hence… straw man. i know this because his very first sentence was the sarcastic line ““Hey, sometimes video games don’t treat women very well! Maybe they should stop doing that!”” and then the next line saying,”Video games aren’t things that care about people’s feelings or society’s injustices.” the actual argument is that there’s sexism in video games, it sometimes gets to a level that’s quite offensive, with the suggestion or hope that maybe the industry could do something about that.

that’s it. nobody is arguing that companies don’t want to make money or that regurgitating the same old crap doesn’t sell. if anything, one argument is that if perhaps developers made more gender diverse games, they’d make even more money.

“The point is that you will not improve the portrayal of women in media through wanting it, or through outrage, or through meaningless industry awards for saying nice words.”

are you suggesting that making people aware of the problem is not helpful? i’ve watched a couple of sarkeesian’s videos, and i can’t for the life of me understand why she’s got as much hate as she had. the videos are kinda boring, but all they do is point out tropes in games. pointing out sexism and women saying “i’d rather not be treated like an object in real life and would not like to be potrayed as such in media” is not helping?

““It’s reasonable to want world peace, but it is unlikely to happen without some sort of incentive that makes sense.””

the horrors of war, racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression aren’t good enough reasons to want peace?

“You will get actual change when you can make a compelling argument for selling games that portray women well.” how about all the people that give examples of games they like that don’t portray women like shit, and say “make more of those and i’ll buy them!” how is that not a valid argument?

“The premise is that a lot video games are misogynistic” is in fact a pretty accurate shorthand for the question at hand.. One example of which is the portrayal of Princess Peach in the hackneyed role of damsel in distress.”

because the actual issue is sexism. sexist is not synonymous with misogynist. sexist/misogynist is not synonymous with trope. if you know of any point where sarkeesian stated this as such or anyone else, i’d gladly say they’re completely wrong. from the videos i’ve seen, she’s just been like “here’s how women are generally portrayed as lame tropes in games and some evidence to substantiate my opinion”. why that was met with so much hatred and vitriol is beyond my comprehension. i sincerely doubt if someone made videos pointing out all the instances of the “action genre hero guy” trope in video games would have been met with such criticism.

Maybe I misunderstood his intent, but I understood it as a line that was clearly intended to be read as humorous and over the top, which illustrates that many of the people arguing against sexist content are focusing on a symptom rather than a root cause. But sure, for the sake of humor, let’s say that he meant it to be taken as an actual position. That still brings us back to the apparently real argument, as to whether there is sexism in video games. I don’t believe Dan is disputing that, and it doesn’t make his points less valid. His points, to wit:

1) Decision makers that drive video game production are motivated by profit

2) Consumers are often more inclined to purchase things that are familiar (implying that that would make familiar subjects/properties/ideas/tropes more safe as an investment)

3) There are few subjects more familiar or historically profitable than archetypes, including sexist ones

4) Assuming the unlikely scenario where all commercial entertainment products featured subjects and characters who were perfectly racially/gender/ethnically/etc. proportional and all parties were positively represented, He believes that those products which feature traditional themes would remain the most profitable.

I wouldn’t presume that you are arguing against the allure of profit or the safety of investing in known commodities, but your third point is interesting, because if the argument is that developers could make more money by producing more diverse games, then that argument is being made badly. And that is ultimately the real issue that annoys people about Ms. Sarkeesian (well, not counting the mouth breathers on 4chan and the lamentable men’s rights crowd). She has the funding, visibility and opportunity to present a real case for how to improve the industry and instead she trots out tired tropes about objectifying women. Is it less true for being a tired trope? No, no more than it is less profitable to include them in video games, but it also doesn’t tell us a lot that’s new. What has been added to the discussion by her most recent video that wasn’t abundantly clear in her first video (which made sense, and was a reasonable discussion of a real problem). But you can donate to her non profit or Kickstarter (speaking of which, I fund a variety of games through Kickstarter.. haven’t seen hers yet. Strange)

And speaking of straw men.. “the horrors of war, racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression aren’t good enough reasons to want peace?”

As for the people that “give examples of games they like that don’t portray women like shit, and say “make more of those and i’ll buy them!”” Well yes, that is exactly the sort of argument that would make sense. Unfortunately, it’s not an argument I see Ms. Sarkeesian making very well. It’s fine to point out that there are problems in video games, and that the portrayal of women is often shoddy, but having established this point, I don’t see her making a strong case for why it should be changes outside of the morality of it. In games that run on mass murder and mayhem, maybe appealing to morality is the wrong way to go. A better answer is to make the argument to profit, and that argument isn’t that hard to make.

Sexism is not synonymous with misogyny, but it is fairly identical in usage for this instance. And while sexist/misogynist (which you strangely use as a single entity here, despite your last sentence) is not the same as trope, she doesn’t focus on any trope outside of those that are sexist/misogynist. I don’t really understand the level of hatred she gets, but it is both the reason for and problem with her notoriety. It doesn’t make rabid (and frankly frightening) assholes on the internet right for fixating their seemingly endless well of irrational hatred on her, but I don’t see anyone in this forum saying it does.

” I don’t believe Dan is disputing that, and it doesn’t make his points less valid.”

no, but he did say he doesn’t see a problem with that because… profit.
“I disagree that a lot of video games being misogynistic is a problem at all. Mario games sell.”

“Assuming the unlikely scenario where all commercial entertainment products featured subjects and characters who were perfectly racially/gender/ethnically/etc. proportional and all parties were positively represented…”

you’re stretching a bit. he only said 50/50 in regards to gender, not anything else you’ve tacked on. regardless, that’s still a straw man. nobody is proposing that everyone be positively and equally represented 100% of the time, that’s taking the argument to an absurd extreme as if that’s really the goal trying to be achieved.

“opportunity to present a real case for how to improve the industry and instead she trots out tired tropes about objectifying women.”

she also has a decent soapbox to point out that there’s a problem in the first place, which is relevant because a lot of people seem to deny it actually exists. there are still people that think racism doesn’t exist, such as morons with a huge soapbox like ann coulter. i’m sure there’s people that don’t even understand what sexism is, or feminism, or an infinite number of things, so there’s certainly value in identifying and explaining issues without explicitly saying what should be done. which, according to the original kickstarter, the point was to “explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games.” it does not say ‘and how to fix the industry.’

“And speaking of straw men.. “the horrors of war, racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression aren’t good enough reasons to want peace?””

um… you said…”It’s reasonable to want world peace, but it is unlikely to happen without some sort of incentive that makes sense.” and i responded with things that many people would like to rid the world of to establish world peace. you’re seriously suggesting that getting rid of those horrible things aren’t incentives that make sense to want world peace? how the hell is that a straw man? do you not know what incentive is or do you just completely not understand what a straw man argument is?

“Sexism is not synonymous with misogyny, but it is fairly identical in usage for this instance.”

misogyny is the hatred of women. sexism is treating someone a certain way based on gender stereotypes or discrimination based on sex. are we really not in agreement about this? it’s not even close. super mario is not an example of misogyny. as i said, if sarkeesian or anyone else were conflating the two things, i would gladly point out that she’s/they’re wrong.

“which you strangely use as a single entity here, despite your last sentence”

as a single entity… despite there being a slash between them. see above.

“she doesn’t focus on any trope outside of those that are sexist/misogynist.”

perhaps because the original point of it was to “explore five common and recurring stereotypes of female characters in video games” because she was “regularly disappointed in the limited and limiting ways women are represented.” based on that it’s obvious she’s going to focus on negative ones, and the negative ones are most likely going to be sexist ones.

“It doesn’t make rabid (and frankly frightening) assholes on the internet right for fixating their seemingly endless well of irrational hatred on her”

strongly agreed.

” but I don’t see anyone in this forum saying it does.”

didn’t say they were. but there’s one saying sexism in videogames is not a problem (baltimore dan), another implying it doesn’t even exist (greenbastard), and two people using straw men about video games not being sentient (baltimore dan, deathbar2000). but it shows that you don’t have to go far to see people that are in denial which certainly doesn’t help anything, but obviously plays a part in reinforcing lewis’s law.

I think everybody here is missing the most important point of this article: Joss Whedon’s twitter profile picture is of him ever so coolly taking off (putting on?) his fedora. For shame, Joss, for shame.

I suppose that’s true, Dan appears to be ok with there being misogyny in a lot of video games. Personally, although I feel like there is too much by a fair amount, I’m not as worried as I could be given the context of environments with an overwhelming degree of general violence, theft, arson, mass destruction etc. My only issue is the extent to which this targets women, but then again, I’m not convinced that there isn’t some benefit to society dealing with a lot of issues like violence and sexual violence through a cathartic medium like video games.

“you’re stretching a bit. he only said 50/50 in regards to gender, not anything else you’ve tacked on..”

Yes, I am indeed stretching, in part because I understood it to imply that he meant something along those lines, but it doesn’t change the point of the argument. His point, as I understand it, was that in his opinion EVEN IF you were to achieve this state of impossible perfection, the results would still be unsatisfactory because it wouldn’t change buying habits which favor misogynistic subject matter.

Now: Straw Person: This fallacy occurs when, in attempting to refute another person’s argument, you address only a weak or distorted version of it. Straw person is the misrepresentation of an opponent’s position or a competitor’s product to tout one’s own argument or product as superior. This fallacy occurs when the weakest version of an argument is attacked while stronger ones are ignored.

His conditional opinion doesn’t fit the definition. Along similar veins, I said “But it’s like saying “It’s reasonable to want world peace, but it is unlikely to happen without some sort of incentive that makes sense.”” In other words, this is a lofty goal but not obtainable through the proposed means. You are clearly leaving out the part that makes that a hypothetical, in order to strengthen your position (in other words, a straw man). As for the implication that I oppose world peace, and support the horrors of war, racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression, well, you caught me. Guilty as charged. As for your proposal that the horrors of war, racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression are sufficient motivators to bring about world peace, they’ve done a bang up job so far. Like appealing to morality in the angry teen gamer circles, if it were a plausible solution, it would have worked already.

Since we cannot seem to agree to the meaning or usage of the term straw man, can we please stop bandying it about. We’re really just working at the level of ‘nu uh, YOU’RE a straw man!’

It’s fine that she has a soapbox for pointing out what very few people dispute in the first place. And it’s fine that she makes a fairly sizable amount of money for providing a source of renewable outrage over products that nobody is trying to hide. She’s preaching to the choir, and praised as if she’s a groundbreaking revolutionary. As for the notion that there are people who don’t know what sexism is, yup, I’m sure that’s true, but like the other morons you referenced, this isn’t doing much to address the issue.

Sexism: Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Assuming that sexism, in this case is not a matter of denying someone a job or believing that women avatars are poor drivers, the two terms are pretty functionally identical for the purpose of this topic. If the entire purpose of this long pointless discussion was that you think Dan misused the term misogyny specifically in relation to Mario Brothers, then you really care a lot more about specificity in online forums than I think is justified. Unlike our lengthy waste of breath, Dan was pretty succinct, at the expense of detail. Ms. Sarkeesian discusses misogyny, sexism and tropes that involve the two as the mainstay of her posted work (or, for the sake of specificity: She discusses representations of women in pop culture narratives, but generally focuses on the sexist or misogynist elements of those tropes and depictions). Of course, you could somewhat glibly summarize that by saying “The premise is that a lot video games are misogynistic”.

…you know what, I surrender.

I’ve spent too long on this, and we are clearly not going to see entirely eye to eye. You go on fighting the good fight until every one of those UPROXX pigs acknowledges that women in video games should be treated less badly, and when you’re done with that, get started on world peace, the horrors of war, racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression.

Or she could just make some video games that she perceives to be not shitty? It’s nobody’s responsibility to invest capital into games they don’t believe are going to sell well, so if she wants to prove that selling big-budget video games that don’t violate any of her tropes or treat women like whatever won’t be a financially losing proposition…have at it, Anita. She’s probably in a reasonably good position to spearhead an effort like that, since her personal brand is pretty valuable right now. It can be a man in distress and somehow the only violence will be against men or whatever, sounds fun.

Actually according to Sarkeesian, and I think more importantly her defenders, Mario could be seen as misogynistic. It has the trope of a damsel in distress. “Why is it a damsel? Why can’t Mario be saved?” That’s the kind of argument you’d get out of some of them. The sad thing is that they get so hung up on something like that, that they actually fail to point their attention to something that really deserved criticism. In this particular example, it would be in my mind, “Why the hell did Super Princess Peach, a game that was supposed to turn the idea on its head, have Peach use ridiculous emotion powers that could be seen as stereotyping women as only being emotional?”.

I think nyccine is 100% correct. To criticize without putting the real work in to understand what was going on at the time if the game is supposed to be a period piece or to understand the creator’s intentions is not right or fair especially when you’re trying to enlighten people. That just makes people who believe you be misinformed, which can lead to as much harm. Journalism is research. Your teachers and professors would fail your papers if they didn’t have research behind them in highschool and college. Why are people getting away with it on the internet if enlightenment is the goal? Maybe I’m wrong and that’s not Anita Sarkeesian’s goal. but it sure seems like it is.

Let us take it one step further than video games: ANYTHING. The threats drown out actual criticism. Comics is going through that rough patch thanks to the Teen Titans cover controversy and #firerickremender.

Joss Whedon probably doesn’t play video games or pay attention to what’s going on, so he got fooled by Anita’s dishonest cherry picking of game scenes to create a false impression of what goes on in those games. Just because he is Joss Whedon doesn’t mean he has an informed opinion. Anita is lying about at least a couple of the games she criticizes. It’s not just cherry picking, she is taking the game’s story wildly out of context. I think, based on what critics of Anita have said, that the makers of “Hitman: Absolution” might be able to sue her for the lies she has told about what their game is about.

I am not a video game player myself, never played Hitman, but I believe the critics of Anita more than Anita because I watch TV shows like “Cross Bones” and “Black Sails” which are about brutal and dangerous pirate societies and I could see how one could easily take a few scenes out of context, apply a “feminist” perspective, and completely distort what those shows are really about. A feminist perspective on that society is about as useless as a feminist perspective on science that says Newton’s Principia Mathematica is a “rape manual.” And yes, that was said by Sandra Harding in her 1986 book “The Science Question in Feminism.” A lot of the story societies resemble the pirate societies.

These brutal pirate societies have very few women in them. In both stories only the guys at the top have wives and intimate relationships with women, all the rest of the pirates can only sexually relate to the very few prostitutes on their islands. Take that situation out of context with clips and you could paint a picture of an incredibly misogynistic society. It would be a lie to do so however.

When you limit the number of women in a society to such a low percentage of the population you inevitably turn them into a costly resource, rare as gold, that can be exploited for money and power by people who are brutal enough and influential enough to exploit the situation.﻿

Of course, it also doesn’t help that a lot of gamers are actually immature and only half understand the criticism they’re given by both Anita and her more accurate opponents. A lot of them do say stupid and ignorant and just plain hateful things. The idiots think their hate matters just because it’s hate. The idiots have to learn that if all you can express is hate with no adequate justification or explanation the easier you are to not just dismiss, but exploit as Anita does.﻿

But seriously, is your brain broken? Both hemispheres? I just find it difficult to take your inane responses seriously when you can’t be bothered to make a logical argument. How did you decide on not using logic? Sitting in your room one day and just thought, “You know what, I’m going to use words, sentences, and paragraphs, and unnecessarily use ‘and’ when listing things, and make inane comments but the whole time I’m never going to use logic.”